His Way Was the Highway
By Tim Brown, Times Staff Writer

Phil Jackson left Los Angeles on Sunday morning, bound for his house on a lake in Montana.

By late afternoon, his cellphone close by, he felt the urge to say farewell.

"I'm several hundred miles north and east of L.A.," he said. "With one night in a hotel, I can be at the lake by nightfall tomorrow."

For the next 45 miles or so, broken up by occasional lapses in satellite signals, he spoke of his five years in Los Angeles, the championships they won, the relationships that tore at them all, and where they would all be by, well, nightfall tomorrow.

He wrote a journal of the season that will be published, he said, in the fall. He finished the manuscript this week and sent it off. He left behind Jeanie Buss, his love for most of his time here, and they remain a couple, despite the Nevada highway that flew from beneath his black Mercedes on Sunday.

On June 18, Jackson met for a few minutes with Jerry Buss, Jeanie's father and the Laker owner. At the end of three NBA titles, countless sellouts at Staples Center and an era of basketball Los Angeles had never seen, nor will again, Buss told him he would not return.

Jackson knew it for months.

"I'm content," he said. "I'm happy I left. It looks like the right time to leave. They wanted to make some moves to accommodate signing Kobe. We knew they probably wouldn't work if I was coaching the team."

But, he insisted, "I'm not back because I didn't want to come back."

So, he gained on north and east, his successor the day before having called him "probably the greatest coach to ever coach the game," nine championships suggesting it is at worst a tie. His record in 14 NBA seasons was 832-316. He was 175-69 in the postseason. He coached Michael Jordan and Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant and countless nobodies into doing something special, and now he was 58, out of a job, pointed toward a lake.

"I don't anticipate coaching," he said. "I wouldn't rule it out. But I don't anticipate I will. I may coach a group of AAU kids somewhere. But I'm not going to solicit an NBA job."

"You can't replace Shaquille, there's no doubt about that," Jackson said. "He's a unique player. Los Angeles is going to have to say goodbye to any chance of being a multiple champion in the near future?. It's a very daunting task without that force in the middle."